S'Wonderful

I had an interesting day today. While my voice lesson was cancelled due to the cold weather, my classes were not.

The first one was Voice Repertoire, taught by one of our excellent vocal coaches here. This class is basically meant to help singers and accompanists get acquainted with a wide variety of art song literature across French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, English, and perhaps a few other languages. (An art song is a piece that sets a poem or perhaps another snippet of literature. While you can have a "group" or "cycle" of art songs that have dramatic cohesion and are meant to be performed together - perhaps all from a particular poem "set" - the key is that they are not staged. They are not part of a larger dramatic work like an opera. At least, that's how I think about art song.)

In today's class, we visited Special Collections, the not-quite-hidden spot at the top of the library where the particularly valuable/rare works live. These works include everything from faculty scrapbooks, to scores on which performers or faculty have taken notes, to original manuscripts by Debussy and Kurt Weill, to an autographed Louisville Slugger baseball bat. (One of the past deans was a baseball fanatic, and he asked a particular player to come perform the part of a narrator at a premiere of a work.)

My favorite holding at the moment, though, is the guestbook which all famous visiting composers and performers sign. It's been kept since the 1920s, and one of the early inscriptions, handwritten, is by George Gershwin. "To the most wonderful music school in the world. Long may its flag wave." He even sketched a melody line beneath, but I didn't get to study it long enough to figure out what it is.

We also saw Kurt Weill's original manuscript for Der Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). In it were his markings and those of Bertolt Brecht, the librettist, editing the score. Evidently, they revised it so much after the 1928 premiere that a full score was not published until the early 1970s. Perhaps the most famous piece from this opera is Mack the Knife, which has become very popular as a jazz tune. Ella Fitzgerald did a great version in Berlin. What's remarkable to me is that this is the second opera piece I can think of that has had a life in jazz. Summertime, from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, is the other.

This afternoon, I had my first chorus rehearsal for The Marriage of Figaro. We are a small bunch, no more than five per section (SATB), but the singers are fantastic. There aren't many parts for the chorus to sing in this opera - another reason why its length is so taxing for the principle roles - but we have fun. Today, we spoke through the Italian text of each piece twice, in rhythm. Then, we just sight read it on the text. I'd learned the music over the winter break, but most of the others were seeing it for the first time today. Four part harmony immediately, with almost every note perfect. Unbelievable. I love being at this school.

Tonight, I'm plowing through music theory homework and then braving the cold to see a fellow voice student's recital. Should be fun!

~Hope